The mood at the recent Legal Aid Practitioners Group conference was sombre.

Legal aid specialists undoubtedly face change: they do not, however, necessarily face disaster, particularly if they specialise in criminal work.Let us leave the intricacies of franchising behind for a moment and begin with what we know of the criminal legal aid market.

In 1992/93, just over 7000 offices were paid for a criminal case.

This probably represents around 5000 firms.Figures recently released to Parliament have given us more detail than was previously available on solicitors' earnings from criminal work.

They received a total of £267m for cases in the magistrates' and Crown Courts.

Barristers, by contrast, were paid under half of this sum, a total of £124m.The major sources of the work of both branches of the legal profession, as one would expect, are different.

The bulk of solicitors' money, some £176m, comes from the magistrates' courts.

These, however, generated only £17m for barristers: their money overwhelmingly came from the Crown Court, which generated £117m for them compared to £92m for solicitors.Solicitors' total income from criminal legal aid in 1992/93 was £360m.

This was made up of the figures above plus green form and the two duty solicitor schemes.

It represented 70% of the total criminal legal aid budget.

Barristers received 26% and disbursements accounted for the rest.The Law Society's estimate of the total turnover of all solicitors was £6.2 billion.

Thus, criminal legal aid contributed just under 6% of all earnings.

This can probably be adjusted to a more accurate 5% to allow for the fact that legal aid payments include VAT.One of the major beefs of criminal legal aid practitioners over the last couple of years has been the introduction of fixed fees by the Lord Chancellor in the magistrates' courts.

Braving strike action by solicitors in the west of England, Lord Mackay introduced these last April.The Legal Aid Board's last annual report suggests that the fearsome battle that raged prior to this may have been based on some false assumptions.The cost per criminal case in the magistrates' court did soar through the late 1980s, never falling below an annual 10% increase between 1986/87 and 1991/92.

It then fell to earth with a bump, hitting only 2.8% in 1992/93, the year before fixed fees were in place.The immediate reason for this was that solicitors suddenly spent an average ten minutes less with each client and managed to travel faster or less far, reducing their travelling time by an average 40 minutes.

The ultimate cause is unclear.

The consequence is not: fixed fees can have made very little difference to solicitors' earnings per case.

There is a lesson here.

Discussion of the future benefits as much from precision as emotion.Three factors other than franchising will affect the future of solicitors' criminal legal aid practices.

These are: the overall pattern of criminal prosecutions; the total of legal aid remuneration; and, finally, its distribution between the two branches of the profession.Prosecutions are clearly on their way up.

We are to have less use of cautions and more of prisons.

There is every reason to think that the number of cases funded by criminal legal aid will grow.One estimate, by Lee Bridges of Warwick University, is that the removal of the right of silence in the police station alone may cost between £35m and £45m in increased use of duty solicitors.Furthermore, the strategy of the Lord Chancellor's Department appears to be to contain civil costs to allow for increased criminal expenditure.

It has just produced its three year strategic plan.

This is couched in the obscure management jargon that is currently so fashionable but underneath the fundamental aims, the strategic priorities, the guiding principles, the key challenges and the strategic objectives one thing is - relatively - clear.

Aside from abolishing committals and a bit of work on Crown Court pre-trial issues, it is civil legal aid work which is in the firing line.As to the distribution of work between the two branches of the profession, the Bar's report on the work of the 'young Bar' produced last November makes interesting reading.

It records that solicitors are increasingly preferring to instruct fellow solicitor advocates rather than barristers because they know how to work with the file rather than requiring a specially prepared brief.Furthermore, the Bar itself recorded that: 'Too frequently we have heard, in our conversations and investigations, complaints as to the attitude of barristers.

Arrogance, rudeness and being patronising...'The combined effect of these three factors should be that there remain opportunities for solicitors specialising in crime to increase their income.

Crime could well hold its own as a percentage of solicitors' total turnover, even though the impact of franchising and the growth of freelance solicitor advocates may be to distribute the work in a different way.Solicitors' challenge to barristers' current sources of income will, of course, accelerate as they take up increased rights of audience.

Crown Court advocacy will change the career paths of criminal practitioners.

Instead of dropping out exhausted in their late 20s and early 30s after one too many nights at a police station, criminal specialists will be able to expand their work into Crown Court advocacy.

This will bring not only immediate greater prestige but, in the longer term, will broaden the potential path to the Bench.It would be foolish to deny that a bumpy road lies ahead.

Nevertheless, it would also be wrong for criminal practitioners to be too depressed about their future.